The Styx

by Jonathon King

  “Might we just drift a bit, Graham? I so love the quiet here and the stars truly are a wonder.”

  Foster stopped rowing and talking. He had been facing back toward the receding lights of the Poinciana, turned and saw her view of the blackness to the north and was, at least for a moment, transfixed by the sight of the constellation Virgo hanging low in the sky and the star field around it dipping down to the horizon.

  “You do have the constant touch of the dramatic that follows you,” he said. It was perhaps the first statement of truth she’d heard from him, and she felt a twinge of regret at what she was about to do. But the feeling did not stop her. She slid forward to the edge of her seat, moving closer to him. He reacted as she knew he would to the subtle invitation, shipped his oars and matched her movement until their lips met.

  When he pressed, she retreated.

  “Oh, my, Graham,” she said, feigning breathlessness. She reached out to clutch both sides of the boat as if to steady herself. “I, I…oh, my.”

  Now her right hand went to her throat, though she knew in the darkness he would not see the lack of any sort of blush to her skin.

  “I do believe I’m becoming quite dizzy. You have taken me by surprise.” She looked at him with that learned woman’s technique of peering up with the eyes while keeping her chin low. Foster did not move; he was still leaning forward, frozen in an awkward pose.

  “Not unpleasantly,” Marjory added. She then looked about, as if unfamiliar with where exactly they were. “Could we possibly go ashore here? The lack of solid ground beneath my feet is quite, umm, unsettling.”

  Foster settled back in his seat as if commanded and reached for the oars.

  “Absolutely,” he said, scanning the shore line and picking up the obvious dark outline of the dredge dock. “I apologize, my dear. My intentions were honorable and I did not mean to cause you to swoon.”

  The slightest touch of bravado was in his voice. A man taking responsibility for his manliness, thought Marjory. Ha! All her previous inklings of guilt disappeared.

  “Just there.” She pointed to the dock. “Could we go ashore there?”

  Foster pulled the last few strokes and beached the bow onto the rim of wet mash that served as the shore. Without hesitation he removed his shoes, rolled up his pants cuffs and got out to push the rowboat higher onto solid ground so Marjory could get out without soiling too much of her gown. He took her arm, and they walked up to high ground while she breathed deeply and appeared to be gathering herself.

  “My,” she said again, using a word she rarely uttered when she was not in the company of people she wished to socially impress or to con into thinking she was weak. “I’m not sure what came over me. But I’m certainly better now.”

  “Are you sure?” Foster said, looking into her eyes but again injecting that touch of overconfidence and double meaning into his voice.

  McAdams noted the question was lacking in true concern and she showed her confusion with a questioning face.

  “I mean are you sure that you don’t know what came over you?”

  Now he was smiling. Did he really think his kiss had caused her to swoon? She turned her face away, hoping it was taken as a blushing moment instead of a mild chagrin. Men, she thought, and then without looking up she took his arm and turned south toward the hotel.

  “There is a path made by the workers. Can we walk together back to the hotel?”

  Foster looked back once at the rowboat, and she read his hesitation.

  “Surely everyone knows whose boat she is and will not dare to move it.” She squeezed his arm just so. “And it was been such a wonderful night. Let’s not let it end so soon.”

  As they walked arm-in-arm through the brush along the lakeshore, McAdams knew that she would not see the baseball player and the young woman even if they were close by. But she did hear the unfamiliar trill of a bird she knew was not native to the island, the whistle low and sounding too much like a pigeon from Brooklyn to be real. Foster made no reaction to the sound; he was again listening to himself. As McAdams moved more quickly down the path and away from the dredge dock, he was again expounding.

  “Mr. Flagler has certainly done a marvelous job with the hotel and the beginnings of the town on shore. Business has doubled since his arrival, and that means at the very least a doubling of my own trade.”

  McAdams was perplexed at where he was going with such conversation and afraid she was losing his focus. He was looking out on the lights of the Poinciana and the approaching paths of the manicured lawns and golf course. He stopped and turned to her.

  “I will be a rich man,” he said, the statement full of what was not being said. He grasped her other arm and pulled her closer.

  Damn, she thought. I’ve gone too far. He’s actually going to propose to me.

  “I will inherit my father’s steamship business and be set for life. The more people who hear about the beauty and climate of this place, the more we’ll ferry them and their necessities for building and living here. There are plans to widen and deepen an intracoastal waterway that for the next one hundred years will be the major transportation line to the very tip of Florida. People will forever flock to our boats.”

  Foster turned his head just so, waiting for her to raise her face to his. “You can be part of all that, Marjory.”

  “Why, Graham Foster,” she said, much louder than his romantic whisper. She freed her arms, planted all ten fingertips into Foster’s chest and pressed him back. “Aren’t you just the forward thinking one? And a bit too forward in other ways I might add.”

  She stepped back, turned toward the hotel and began to walk.

  “By the way, if you intend to inherit Florida’s transportation world with your steamships, you should have a conversation with my father when he arrives on the island tomorrow. I do recall on his last trip he talked of some fellow named Ransom Olds who was interested in coming to Daytona Beach, where he said people were sure to go absolutely ga-ga over his new invention called the motor car.”

  CHAPTER 10

  LOOK at yourself, lad!”

  Harris had come forward to the train engine landing, where Byrne had stationed himself ever since the dynamite fiasco some three hours before. Byrne followed the order, looked down at himself and noted that he was indeed covered with soot and coal oils, even though he thought he’d positioned himself out of the stream of smoke and ash.

  “We’ll be pullin’ into West Palm soon enough, and before we cross over to the island you’d best be lookin’ smart, son.

  “Go on back and change into something clean, if you’ve got any. Mr. Flagler is entering his domain and I promise you you’re going to be damned embarrassed to be in the company of such opulence lookin’ like a coal peddler.”

  Byrne headed for the caboose. Harris cut his eyes at the engineer and fireman who were equally soiled and gave them a shrug. “No offense, men.”

  Within the hour Byrne was stationed at his place on the rear platform. He’d brushed his coat, inspected his shirts and picked the one with the least dirt around the collar and polished his brogans with Harris’ boot black. By now he was used to the movement of the train and could feel it slowing as they eased into the populated area of West Palm Beach, if you wanted to call it populated. Byrne had poked his head around the corner to look forward several times, thinking that at some point he’d be able to see a skyline of the city but was disappointed each time by the continued flatness of brush and scrub pine and the seemingly endless tangle of green. Soon, off to the east he picked up the reflection of water, a lake that Harris would later call Lake Worth. To the west they passed several acres of cleared land and rows of crops that his mentor would tell him were pineapple plants. Byrne had seen the fruit once in New York when a street merchant had somehow gotten a load of the oblong, prickly looking orbs and made a show of whacking at the individual husks with a machete while guaranteeing “such sweetness and juicy flavor like you’ve never imagined in your lives.” Byrn
e noted there was a crude sort of sprinkler system spewing water over the crops, which led him to believe there would be plumbing in the city. He would be proved wrong.

  A dirt road began to parallel the tracks, starting as little more than a two-rut wagon trail and then turning into a hard, flat roadbed and then improving, if you could say that, into a surface tamped down with a strange, shell-like crust. As they entered the town proper, a few two-and three-story wooden buildings sprouted on the side streets with signs like O.W. Weybrecht, The Pioneer Hardware Store and E.H. Dimmick, Druggist. But many of the businesses were in tents or carts not unlike old Mrs. McReady’s outside his New York tenement.

  The train slowed and with the familiar hiss of the steam brakes came to a full stop. Byrne was about to hop down to take position on the ground outside Flagler’s car when Harris appeared at the door.

  “Not yet, lad. They’re switchin us onto the island spur. Just the hotel guests in the last two cars, the parlor car and Mr. Flagler’s number 90. The rest of the lot’ll stop at the station in town and then be headin’ south to Miami.

  “We’ll take you down that route in the future, Mr. Byrne. For now the boss needs us here,” Harris aimed his exaggerated nod off to the east. When he disappeared inside Byrne stepped over to the other side of the platform and looked toward the lake. In the hard sun he could see an enormous gleaming white structure rising up alone on the opposite shore. He determined she was at least seven stories, with huge mansard roofs at either end and a broad cupola at the middle. It was no doubt the Royal Poinciana, but it looked out of place along the flat horizon of blue lake water and low green shrub. Byrne hadn’t seen anything since Washington, D.C. to compare, and as he looked down the side of the train cars, he spotted several of the upscale passengers leaning out of their windows and pointing. They were apparently joining in his simple astonishment. The train began to move again, this time curving along a spur and then up onto a bridge that was taking them across the lake, the grand hotel growing larger and more impressive with each turn of the wheels.

  Even from the slight elevation of ten feet over sea level, the greenness of the place washed over Byrne. The coastal shrubs, the hotel’s manicured lawns in the distance, all ringed by aqua-colored water that itself seemed to take on a tinge of green. He could smell the salt again, the air filling by the minute with that tang, the bite that was no longer the fish monger’s scent, but one all its own, simmering in the heat and carried by fresh wind.

  Byrne watched what from a distance had looked like rag-topped stakes become sentries with plumed hats and then morph into impossibly straight-trunked and smooth-skinned royal palm trees with filigreed blades sprouting like fans at their heads. As the train eased off the bridge at the island end and slowed next to the hotel’s southern entryway, Byrne picked up the strains of music. It was a joyful, welcoming tune he could not name, but it had the same effect of making him grin and did the same to those people gathering to greet the new arrivals. When the cars came to a hissing stop, he could see an eight-piece band tucked under a garden trellis. He jumped down off the iron stairs and smartly gained position at the door to Flagler’s car as instructed.

  There were some thirty people in the crowd. Byrne swept his eyes and assessed them: moneyed was the first impression, men in clean summer suits, most of light colored shades, all wearing banded boaters or white fedoras. The women were to a one draped in long dresses of white that were near blinding in the bright sun and they too were in hats of wide brim and varying shapes. Byrne’s second impression was that despite seeking this extraordinary Florida sun, they had all gauzed their skin from its touch: the hats, the long sleeves, the veils.

  He saw no darkness, no slouch or averted look, no movement at the edges of the group that smelled of predation. Despite the hats, the men were all openly showing their faces, smiles and grins abounded. The music stopped, spontaneous clapping began, and Byrne turned to see Harris at the foot of the steps to number 90 and Mrs. Flagler standing for a second of adoration at the top. She was dressed in the same manner as the women awaiting her, and Harris offered his meaty hand as balance as she stepped into the graces and greetings of her own endearing flock. The respectful ovation continued as Flagler appeared, he too in a straw boater, but now in an impeccable light woolen suit that seemed far too business-like for the occasion. He had already donned the darkened eyeglasses that shielded his eyes from the bright light, and stepped down unaided after graciously tipping his hat to the gathering.

  Byrne followed as unobtrusively as possible to the inner circle. Harris had done the same. And so too had Mr. McAdams, Flagler’s second-in-command. He took up a position immediately to Flagler’s left—either bathing in his boss’s greetings and adoration, or protecting him? Byrne watched the hands of those who reached out to shake hands with the patrician, tracked anyone whose fingers might go to the inside of a jacket as they approached, anyone whose eyes were down first and rose only at the last minute. The music started again as the group moved toward the hotel, the entourage stopping only long enough for a kiss to Mrs. Flagler’s cheek by another white-draped woman or a pleasant bow by an apparent friend or business acquaintance of her husband. Harris was just giving Byrne an eye-rolling high sign when both of them snapped their heads forward at a completely unexpected yelping of a dog. The shoulders ahead seemed to turn at odd angles and hat brims tipped downward, Byrne pick up the movement at ground level of a white object that was moving quickly through the forest of legs in a more or less direct line to the man he was supposed to protect. His wand was already out in his hand and he flicked it out to its length and in his peripheral vision he sensed Flagler begin to bend at the waist as if doubling over. Byrne began to step into the void that seemed to be naturally forming in front of the old man before he got his first full view of the white dog and heard Flagler say in the loudest and most emotional statement since he’d met the man: “Delos!” The white dog leapt into his master’s waiting arms, licked the old man’s chin and engendered the only smile that Byrne would ever see on Flagler’s face. Byrne retracted the baton and tried to slip it back into his coat unnoticed.

  The procession continued up the steps and into the south portico of the hotel, Harris stopped at some unseen boundary and turned to his proégé, giving him the sign again that their responsibility was finished. Byrne nearly banged shoulders with Mr. McAdams.

  “Interesting walking stick,” McAdams said, looking into Byrne’s eyes with a mixture of interest and mirth and then down to the coat pocket where the baton was now secreted. “But I assure you, young Pinkerton that if you had broken the neck of Mr. Flagler’s favorite living thing, it would have been the last act of protection you would have performed on this island.”

  Byrne looked unblinking into McAdams’ face. The man was twenty years his elder, nearly his height, had flecks of gray in his hair and the scent of eau de toilet rose from his collar in the heat. But there were also sharp creases at the corners of his eyes. The lines made him look distinguished, or perhaps deeply tired. His words had not come off as an attempt to put Byrne in his place. That would have been a tone with which Byrne had long ago become familiar when in the company of the higher class. He considered a rejoinder, perhaps a comment that if his reflexes were so poor that he couldn’t check his first reaction, he truly wouldn’t deserve the position of protection. But he simply said, “Yes sir.”

  He took a step backward then two more when a flurry of soft white fabric and a high-pitched song of “Father! Father!” seemed to push him out of the way.

  Later, Byrne’s sense of it would be as a cloud of bright chiffon and a waft of gardenia, a glance of tumbling auburn and a glimpse of china skin. The enveloping hug between McAdams and this sudden woman was equal parts strong, athletic, loving and dear.

  “Oh, father. I did miss you so.”

  Byrne saw the thin waist, outlined by the pull of her dress under her father’s arms. He saw the hard knot of muscled calf as she stood on tiptoe. He saw the
kiss she blessed to her father’s cheek and he saw the eye, green as an emerald, which caught and seemed to both notice and acknowledge him over her father’s shoulder.

  “Eyes right, boy!”

  Harris was at Byrne’s sleeve, pulling him back toward the train.

  “Out of your league, lad. Out of your class. And out of your head if you think for a second more of the daughter of Mr. McAdams.”

  Byrne blinked and turned his attention to the hands before him as Harris was flipping through a roll of money, counting out twenty dollars and then placing it in Byrne’s palm.

  “That’s a week’s pay, Mr. Byrne, for services rendered and more to be expected,” Harris said. “Get your things out of the train car. It’ll cost you a nickel to walk the bridge back to the other side. Over in town I would recommend the Seminole Hotel, corner of Banyan and Narcissus. Can’t miss it. It’s the biggest damn building on the mainland. I’ll come and get you there when you’re needed.

  “And I’d warn you of spendin’ time on saloon alley if it would make any difference. They’re a tough bunch of rail workers out there on a weekend night. But I’ll figure you know how to comport yourself in such an environment.”

  Within minutes Byrne had his duffel containing everything he owned in hand and was walking back along the rails toward the bridge to the mainland—walking, not exactly with purpose. For some reason he kept looking back at the grand hotel, over his shoulder at first, then in an almost sidestepping crab-walk, unable to stop staring at the glow of the place, the unusual set and rustle of the long-bodied palm trees. Was he looking for another glimpse of the girl in the brilliant white dress? Or trying to set this new fairyland in the proper context of his new life? It had always been his way to assess a place — a neighborhood, a row of residences, a beer hall, a tenement alleyway. Who belonged there and who didn’t. Where was the danger mostly likely to lie? Where were the escape routes? There was something here that made him wary other than its setting and smell and air of opulence. He’d known the feeling from being in the moneyed center of New York City, the feeling of not belonging and always watching it as an outsider. But this was different, and his sense was that he was both fascinated by the island and too suspicious to turn his back on it. The other thought was that this was the kind of place his brother Danny would see as an opportunity, a target and a mark.